


Impossibilities

by Whreflections



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire (Teen Wolf), Dryad Claudia Stilinski, Dryad Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Nemeton, Nymphs & Dryads, Pre-Slash, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:02:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27035377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: The Hale pack runs a magical items shop in Beacon Hills, just as they have for generations.  Derek could have been anything and gone anywhere; Laura's taking over the pack and the store- but Derek likes carpentry, and space, and so he stays, and does beautiful work, and asks little for it.He likes the time alone in the woods maybe most of all- but he isn't alone when he goes into the preserve, not anymore- and the thing is, it seems like he's the only that remembers that he used to be.  Everyone else thinks the Nemeton never burned to the ground- and maybe Derek's remembering wrong, or maybe he isn't.Maybe the creature in the woods watching him is the only one who knows the truth.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 8
Kudos: 157





	Impossibilities

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a snippet of something that could become something more, or may just stay as an intruiging glimpse- I'm unsure lol 
> 
> but, most of all, it's for my very loved friend, who I have known for 5 years as of yesterday, and the present for that is wood ;)

Obviously, there were always eyes in the woods. Derek was no stranger to the feel of them on the back of his neck—how could he be? To anyone born to the wild in any degree, the free spaces of the world were in themselves living things. He could feel the presence of a place in the brush of a thousand unseen gazes—a nuthatch there and gone, a bobcat whose glistening eyes if he caught them at all might have been only a trick of the light. 

Being seen in the wilderness when he should have been alone didn’t unnerve him—he knew too well that he was never alone, not in the woods. For a wolf, there was a measure of comfort and balance in that, a welcome familiarity. 

The absence of that very feeling should have been what told him there was something other about this place. The eyes he could feel tracking down his spine didn’t feel familiar at all. They itched, more like the uncertain tick of sharp chitin than the brush of a feather.

Every time he turned, whether his eyes flared or didn’t, the results didn’t change. There was nothing there but the wood. 

======

In the cellar beneath its base, he dreamed of the Nemeton. 

In his dreams, they walked around him like a predator, like they had no fear for him at all. Derek had never felt so small. Not in front of a hunter; not anywhere. 

_Do you see your own insignificance, little wolf? Do you see that your alpha has sent you into the teeth of something so old you cannot comprehend me? You are safe in my mouth because you are of no consequence; do you understand? Should I need you, I could court your favor far easier than you could court mine, but your presence here means nothing to me until you have a request, or become a problem._

_If I were you, I would not become a problem._

When he wakes, he can never capture the spirit of the Nemeton’s face, but it isn’t a match to the eyes he feels in the woods. It is wholly unique, and wholly strange—he would have sworn when he was a boy, the tree was cut down and burned, its roots withered and dead, relics of another time. He was absolutely certain of it, so certain he called his mother on the first day he came to stay in this place, only to have her tell him that as a child, he must have had a very vivid dream.

The nemeton in Beacon Hills has stood for centuries. It is powerful, and still growing. Strong, and solid; unbowed. There is a mark, if you know where to find it, where an axe cut into it, and the wood was once burned, but the damage was stopped before it could spread. 

She’s right; of course she has to be—but it isn’t what Derek remembers. If there had been a tree here when he was a boy, he would have climbed it. He would have been awe of it—it stretches so tall and wide that it almost calls to mind the great redwoods. He would have _remembered_ —but he doesn’t, and no one else does, so he has to be wrong, doesn’t he?

The Nemeton has never died, but when the spirit touches him in his dreams, he wakes up with ash on his arm. 

He brushes it off, and keeps searching. 

======

Derek finds the tree he needs on the fourth day—a substantial black walnut tree, large enough to craft the chest their buyer has requested, but not so old that to cut it down would be a travesty. 

When he tries to come back with the axe that afternoon, the trail of his scent is covered with a strange smell, so thoroughly overpowering that he loses his bearings entirely. It isn’t _bad_ ; it’s impossible to describe—strong like wet, green wood, harsh on the back of his tongue. 

He searches, and searches, and ends up back at the Nemeton.

He would have had suspicions, then—but it’s the way the back of his neck burns like the jab of a sharpened branch when he swears and kicks the base of the tree that tells him everything. 

He wasn’t entirely wrong, before. When he turned around, there was nothing there but the wood—and that’s precisely the problem. 

======

Derek might be a carpenter rather than a mage, but he isn’t entirely foolish. 

He’s also the son of a powerful alpha, and he isn’t going back home empty handed.

Instead, he thinks back to his lessons with Deaton, goes out to the hardware store, and comes back with supplies. In the clearing in front of the Nemeton, he lays out an offering to the watcher in the woods—rainwater and stone, an apology in what’s meant to be a single drop of blood, but a few fall in. He assumes it won’t matter; more can’t be worse than just enough. 

He sits down, and waits so long that he wonders if he was wrong, if he’d let his imagination get the better of him. If there was nothing in the woods but a wild creature that perhaps he’s never seen, Laura will never let him hear the end of it—

But his visitor comes just after dark, carrying a light in a mason jar that looks as unnatural as any Derek has ever seen. Oddly, that almost certainly couldn’t be further from the truth. Everything about this one is natural, from his nakedness to the honey amber richness of his eyes. For half a second, the light catches on them so brightly that it flashes through Derek’s mind that he’s never seen anything that pure, like syrup made crystal clear. 

In hindsight, he will realize that it might have been a good moment to remember the truth of amber, and sap, and slow suffocation of hapless victims by an inexorable source. 

“This is insulting, you know,” the dryad said. He settled cross legged across from Derek, placing the jar into the water, diffusing the light. 

“I followed the instructions; that stone—”

“That stone is a fucking birdbath.” Clear and crisp, the tension off his tongue was biting. “And you bought that rainwater. I’m not drinking it.”

“It’s fresh,” Derek said, unsure what the fuck he had to defend. He wasn’t a mage; he’d thrown this together. If no one had questioned it, he would have readily admitted in his own mind that it was shit.

“It’s bottled in plastic; it’s disgusting. You came into my woods to kill one of my subjects without my consent, and now you’ve insulted me, so I think you should stop talking.”

Across the water, their eyes met. Derek’s breath hung in his chest like some strange suspension. 

When he found it again, he could have apologized, and didn’t. 

“There are no dryads left this far west. Not outside of Muir woods.”

“You just don’t know when to stop talking do you?”

“I don’t run my mouth; I’m just saying, if you go up as far north as the Canadian Rockies, maybe—”

“Oh my God; I’m literally sitting right in front of you, you stupid, arrogant—” The branches that curled up from under the dryad’s skin and out from his shoulders could have looked like wings, if they had been less terrifying. They were there and gone with the flash of his temper, and still Derek’s eyes flared.

The wolf wanted to run, or to lunge. Instead, he dug his nails into his palm, and for a moment they breathed in unison. 

“Do you want to tell me I don’t exist again,” the dryad whispered. He had no need for volume; even the night bugs had hushed for him. “Or are you ready to listen?”

Derek breathed until his eyes had settled. 

“I never said you didn’t exist, but you shouldn’t be here.” He was sure of that—but he had been sure of the Nemeton, too.

“Neither should you.”

“This is our land—”

“Your land, my forest…” Under the dryad’s hand, the very earth seemed for a moment to rise—not like an earthquake, but with the soft roll of a swell, closer to breathing than catastrophe. “If you look at it from that angle, we’re going to have to coexist, which means you’re going to have to do better than this shitty alter— Or, if you don’t agree to that, I can give you poison ivy on your dick and you can go back to your alpha and ask her to fix it.”

In a different light, with different words, his smile might have been sweet. 

Derek swallowed.

“What do you say?”

“I’m not dumb enough to make deals with fairies,” Derek said. There was no force in it, only the grumble of a wolf who knew he was had. This was not a hill he could defend; he was too off balance. He had no high ground. 

“Oh, I think you’re exactly that dumb, but lucky for you, I’m not actually a fairy—I mean, technically dryads are closer to fae than humans, and I have the blood on my mother’s side, and I absolutely have the gift—but I’m not going to bind you to me for all eternity if you can’t guess my name.”

“And what is your name?”

“I’m absolutely not dumb enough to give a werewolf my name.” It was there again, in the dryad’s smile—something so bright Derek could feel it flutter against his skin. A dangerous heat, like shifting patches of sun. “You can call me Stiles, Derek Hale.”

It wasn’t a name—but there shouldn’t be dryads in Beacon Hills, either. Before he could stop himself, Derek’s head dipped the tiniest fraction, a show of respect. 

About the use of his own name, he kept his mouth shut. 


End file.
